


All In It

by AirgiodSLV



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Honey Trap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:20:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29167944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AirgiodSLV/pseuds/AirgiodSLV
Summary: “Does this actually work?” Nile asks, sounding dubious.“He’s using the eyelashes,” Booker says, sitting back in his chair. “It’ll work.”
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 58
Kudos: 501





	All In It

**Author's Note:**

> Titled after the song by British Sea Power.

“I still can’t get it.” Nile sits back and pushes the laptop across the café table toward Booker. “It’s encrypted, behind some kind of firewall…”

“We could send a virus, download the entire hard drive…”

“Do you know how to do that?” Nile asks Booker, in a tone that says she already knows the answer. “Because I don’t.”

“I’ve seen it in movies,” Booker answers. Joe snorts.

Nicky glances over at him, fingertips tapping against his empty demitasse cup. He’d ordered espresso, and is the only one of them not still nursing a drink. Joe nudges his cup of coffee toward Nicky in silent offering. Nicky’s eyes soften the way they often do in place of a smile, and he shakes his head.

“We could try hacking his phone instead,” Booker suggests.

“It’s an iPhone,” Nile says, which must mean something more to Booker than it does to Joe, who thought that just made it a white phone instead of a black one.

Nicky clears his throat. “What exactly is it we need?”

“There’s a meeting with this guy’s boss and his boss’ boss,” Nile explains, which they already know and which isn’t the answer to Nicky’s question, but Joe knows he’ll be patient and let her finish. “He’s a PA, he’ll have the time and date in his calendar, but we haven’t been able to get into the office building, security is tight.”

“So we need to look at his calendar,” Joe interrupts, before Nile can brief them all over again. She hasn’t shed any of her command authority since her military days, which Joe finds charming, but occasionally he prefers to cut straight to the point.

“Which is on his phone,” Nicky says, looking for confirmation.

“Which is an iPhone,” Nile repeats. Joe gives him a little shrug to say, _yes, I think it’s on the phone_.

“We could steal the phone,” Booker suggests.

“We still couldn’t hack it,” Nile reminds him.

Nicky glances at Joe again. Joe’s mouth quirks up sideways.

“Ah, the young,” Joe teases, for Nile and Booker’s benefit. “They forget that technology isn’t the only way to accomplish everything.”

“You, or Nile?” Nicky asks, gaze drifting across their mark, who is typing away on the laptop they can’t figure out how to break into.

He’s in his twenties, dressed for the office, with his suit jacket hung over the back of his chair and a pair of wire-frame glasses that he pushes up his nose absently with his finger when he’s thinking. Joe looks at his shoes, his tie, his watch, and then shrugs in defeat. This isn’t a skill he’s needed to refine, and his social cues are at least forty years out of date.

“What are you talking about?” Nile asks.

“It used to be called a honey trap,” Joe says, with some relish. “Nile, is he gay or straight?”

“He could be bisexual,” Nile says, sounding unimpressed. Joe’s willing to concede that she has a point, since those labels are new anyway and he’s never found a need for them, but that’s not an answer that actually helps them.

He’s leaning toward just walking up and giving it a shot when one of the patrons who’d just placed an order walks by the mark’s table. He’s blond, tan, wearing very snug trousers, and the mark’s eyes cut right to him as he passes.

Nicky hums thoughtfully. “Younger?”

“Definitely younger,” Joe agrees. “Make him believe he has a chance.”

“You always enjoy this far too much,” Nicky replies, shrugging off his jacket and running his fingers through his hair to work the gel out of it. “Booker, five hundred?”

Booker raises an eyebrow. “Do I look like a man who’s going to bet against you on this, with Joe sitting right here?”

Nicky tucks his shirt in to draw it tighter across his chest and looks to Joe for approval. “Magnifico,” Joe says, grinning.

“Grazie,” Nicky replies dryly.

“Prego.”

“Wait,” Booker says, raising his hand again. “I’ve changed my mind. New terms. If you can’t do it in less than five minutes, you make that eggplant parmigiana with all the layers.”

“That takes four hours,” Nicky protests.

“With cassata for dessert,” Booker finishes. When Nicky rolls his eyes heavenward, he says, “I’m feeling generous. Ten minutes.”

Nicky glances sideways at Joe. “Don’t look at me,” Joe laughs. “I heard the word ‘cassata’.”

Nicky mutters under his breath for a moment, then nods to Booker with the gravity of a bet settled and heads across the café.

His first stop is the counter to place another order, which is an interesting choice. “Tick tock, Nicky,” Booker says under his breath, and Joe stifles another laugh.

“Oh, good opening,” Joe approves, when Nicky collects his new drink and crosses to the mark’s table, looking apologetic and bashful. He’s talking with his hands more than he ever does normally, playing up the passionate Italian angle, and Joe can practically follow the conversation from his gestures alone.

It’s something like, _I asked for the wrong drink, do you want this?_ and then there’s an investigation of the drink in question, Nicky’s eyes fluttering closed when he inhales, before he makes a tentative guess at what’s in the cup. His next emphatic gesture nearly spills coffee onto the table, and he claps a hand over his mouth, apologizing profusely, his eyes bright with nervous laughter.

“Does this actually work?” Nile asks, sounding dubious.

“He’s using the eyelashes,” Booker says, sitting back in his chair. “It’ll work.”

Nicky’s taken a seat at the table with the mark, and they’re chatting now over the half-closed laptop, Nicky rolling the coffee cup between his hands and nodding, listening to whatever the mark is saying. He is, in fact, using the eyelashes, looking down every so often at the table as if he’s grown shy. He’s such a manipulative con artist. Joe feels immeasurably fond.

There’s another exchange, embarrassed and hopeful, an offer, and then Nicky has the mark’s phone in his hands and is keying in a number.

“Oh, very smooth,” Nile says, sounding grudgingly impressed. She checks her own phone. “Three minutes. Guess we’re eating takeout again?”

Booker lifts his hand slightly. “Wait…”

Joe is shaking with laughter now, biting his tongue to hold it in. Nicky slides the phone back across the table, and there’s a moment where Joe thinks he might just make it, but no. Whatever the mark says next, it makes Nicky lean forward to listen, eyes wide and intent.

“Here we go,” Booker sighs, and Joe lets out a guffaw so loud that he has to turn away and cover his grin behind his hand to hide it.

“I don’t get it,” Nile says. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s making conversation,” Booker replies. He sounds remarkably world-weary and defeated for a man who’s undoubtedly going to be savoring homemade cassata tonight. “This is why we don’t send Nicky in for extractions.”

He sounds just like Andy, parroting her tone precisely. “Nice,” Joe tells him, before he turns to smooth the bewildered wrinkle from Nile’s forehead with an explanation. “Nicky likes people. Listening to people. Talking to people.”

“I’d almost think he feels guilty about leading them on, but he does this every time,” Booker says.

The mark has pulled a book out, a hardcover novel with a splashy contemporary cover. He’s explaining something to Nicky, who’s still leaning forward, listening earnestly and nodding.

“He knows this guy isn’t important, right?” Nile says after another minute ticks by. “Like, he doesn’t know anything. He’s not even in on it.”

“He knows,” Joe agrees. “He can’t help himself.”

The mark shows something to Nicky on his laptop, and Nicky smiles and nods and steals a brief glance that says without words, _you’re more interesting than anything on a computer_ , and Joe sighs.

When he tries to show _some_ discretion by looking away for a moment, he finds Nile watching him. “This doesn’t bother you?” she asks. She glances back at the mark’s table. “I mean...I’ve never seen him do this kind of thing before.”

“What, flirt?” Joe asks. He supposes he’s more acquainted than Nile is with Nicky’s style of flirting, which tends to be a direct challenge more often than a tease.

“Is it because you’ve been together so long?” Nile asks, obviously stumbling a little over what she’s really trying to ask him. She’s still getting a handle on what immortality means, even knowing it eventually comes with an expiration date. “You don’t wish he’d flirt like that with you?”

Joe thinks about telling her that when Nicky cooks for them later, he’ll use recipes he’s tweaked over the centuries based on what Joe likes best. That Nicky can change his look so quickly because he always remembers what catches Joe’s eye when they alter their appearances. That he knows exactly how the mark feels right now, because Nicky has never failed to give him the same care and attention when it mattered.

That’s not what she’s really asking, though. She’s asking if she’ll grow old and jaded, if she’ll start to lose the simple pleasures in life; if she’ll grow sad like Booker and cynical like Andy.

He leans forward and takes her hand, still smiling. “Nile,” he promises her, “every moment of this performance is really for me.”

“Is that why it’s taking so long?” Booker asks.

“Sadly no,” Joe admits. “Do we need to stage an intervention?”

“No, here he comes,” Booker says a moment later, and Joe stands with the others, casually making their exit.

Nicky catches up with them when they’re just turning the corner down the block. Joe hands over his jacket and watches nine hundred years settle comfortably again over Nicky’s shoulders when he shrugs it on. Joe is biased, but he thinks Nicky looks more beautiful every year.

“Twenty-four-and-a-half minutes,” Booker announces.

“Did you get it?” Nile asks, and Nicky gives her the date, time, place, and attendance list from the calendar. “What number did you give him?” she asks after she’s entered it all into her own phone.

Nicky gives her an odd look. “Mine. The one I have now, anyway.”

Joe could have told her the answer. Nicky’s willing to use people, but he draws the line at being cruel. He’ll let the mark down gently if he calls, make some excuse about unexpectedly leaving the country, and it probably won’t even be a lie.

“I liked the hand thing,” Joe says, sliding his arm casually around to rest his hand at the small of Nicky’s back, now that they’re out of the mark’s sight.

The corner of Nicky’s mouth turns up, just slightly. “You always like the hand thing.”

“I do,” Joe confirms cheerfully, and is rewarded with another fraction of a smile, only half-hidden when Nicky looks down and away.

“So, back to the safehouse?” Nile asks as they reach another intersection.

“You go ahead,” Joe tells her, already half-laughing when he finishes over the sound of Nicky’s muttered curses: “I believe Nicky and I are making a trip to the market.”


End file.
